If the claim made by a section of IIT officials and some parents of the backward category students seeking admissions to prestigious IITs are to be believed, then a glitch in the new two tier entrance test for admissions to premier technical institutions may debar some of the genuine reserved category students from appearing in the second stage of Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), the JEE Advanced and hence admissions to IITs.

The organisers of JEE Mains and JEE Advanced, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and IIT Joint Admission Board (JAB) are clearly blamed to not foresee the problem in the procedure in the revised examination model.

Erstwhile, there used to be only one exam IIT-JEE for admissions to prestigious IITs and institutes of that category, in which the documentary evidence of being belonging to reserved category (SC, ST, and OBC) was required to be only produced at the time of admission.

This year it was necessary to change this rule to submit the documents at the time of filling the application form for JEE Mains, whereas the organisers have only asked for only declaration of caste and no documents.

Going by past experience, a considerable number of students who had claimed to belong to particular caste considered reserved in their state of domicile was not considered reserved in the list according to the central government, following which they had to shift to the unreserved (Open) category.

However this time only 1.5 lakh students who qualify top slot in JEE Mains will only be allowed to sit in the JEE Advanced, at which stage the verification of caste should be applied, but in absence of documentary evidence is impossible now. Also problem will arise in applying reservations to non-creamy layer candidates as some candidates in past had submitted time-barred income certificates which were not considered.

CBSE has been given the responsibility of conducting JEE Mains and providing list of eligible students to appear in JEE Advanced, which may be clearly flawed if care is not taken of the above aspects.

When pointed out, the CBSE Chairman, is understood to have promised to look into the matter. CBSE is supposed to announce the list of top 1.5 lakh eligible candidates for JEE Advanced on May 7.